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Privacy

Submission + - Mexican "Geolocalization Law" draws ire of privacy activists (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Last week, revisions to Mexican federal law took effect that give public authorities and law enforcement unprecedented ability to compel mobile phone companies to disclose real-time geographic data from mobile phone companies in a wide variety of cases.

The group of legal revisions, popularly known collectively online as the #LeyGeolocalización (Geolocalization Law), appears to be squarely aimed at expanding police power to fight drug violence and gangs in a massive conflict primarily fought along the United States-Mexico border for decades. As new data found from the ACLU and EFF shows, local law enforcement across the United States are likely routinely using a similar practice. The Mexican law codifies what local and federal government in the US have been doing in practice for years.

The bill passed the lower house of the Mexican parliament on March 1 by an overwhelming margin, 315 votes in favor, seven against, and six abstentions. The Mexican government and law enforcement have argued that they need more extensive surveillance power as a way to fight cartel-related violence and kidnappings.
Android

Submission + - Schmidt Testifies Android Did Not Use Sun's IP (computerworld.com) 1

Submitted by
CWmike
CWmike writes: "Google built a 'clean room' version of Java and did not use Sun's intellectual property, Google's executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, testified in court Tuesday. Schmidt said its use of Java in Android was 'legally correct.' On this day seven of the trial, Schmidt gave the jury a brief history of Java, describing its release as 'an almost religious moment.' He told the jury that Google had once hoped to partner with Sun to develop Android using Java, but that negotiations broke off because Google wanted Android to be open source, and Sun was unwilling to give up that much control over Java. Instead, Schmidt said, Google created the 'clean room' version of Java that didn't use Sun's protected code. Its engineers invented 'a completely different approach' to the way Java worked internally, Schmidt testified."
Privacy

Submission + - 2.5M Dead Americans' IDs Stolen Each Year (darkreading.com)

Submitted by
CowboyRobot
CowboyRobot writes: "A new report shows that the rate of abuse comes out to 2,000 times a day that cybercriminals use a dead person's identity. About a third of these were purposefully targetted, while the rest were inadvertent. The report also identified the U.S. metropolitan areas with the worst per capita identity manipulation. At the top of the list is Beaumont, Tex., followed by El Paso, Tex., Detroit; Flint, Mich.; and Jackson, Miss."

Submission + - Mad cow disease confirmed in California (cnn.com)

Submitted by wave9x
wave9x writes: The United States Department of Agriculture confirmed today that the nation's fourth case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), sometimes referred to as "mad cow disease" was found in a dairy cow in California. The animal has been euthanized and the carcass is being being held under State authority at a rendering facility in California and will be destroyed.
Science

Submission + - Childhood Stress Leaves Genetic Scars (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Traumatic experiences in early life can leave emotional scars. But a new study suggests that violence in childhood may leave a genetic mark as well. Researchers have found that children who are physically abused and bullied tend to have shorter telomeres—structures at the tips of chromosomes whose shrinkage has been linked to aging and disease.
EU

Submission + - Drone drops GPS, navigation by vision alone. (suasnews.com)

Submitted by
garymortimer
garymortimer writes: "This technology, developed in the Autonomous Systems Laboratory at ETH Zurich, has two weighty advantages compared with GPS-based flying robots. First, it works both in the open air and in enclosed spaces. The second is that the flying robots can navigate where GPS fails; for example, due to the density of buildings. The camera-based technology allows for a more accurate positioning of the aircraft than is possible with GPS, explains the project coordinator, Davide Scaramuzza. Depending on the environment, GPS errors can be as great as 70 metres — much too imprecise when several flying robots are in close proximity to each other in the air."
Government

Submission + - Should FDA Assess Medical Device Defenses Against Hackers? (informationweek.com)

Submitted by
gManZboy
gManZboy writes: "The vulnerability of wireless medical devices to hacking has now attracted attention in Washington. Although there has not yet been a high-profile case of such an attack, a proposal has surfaced that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or another federal agency assess the security of medical devices before they're sold.

A Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) study showed that between January 2009 and spring 2011, there were 173 incidents of medical devices being infected with malware. The VA has taken the threat seriously enough to use virtual local area networks to isolate some 50,000 devices.

Recently, researchers from Purdue and Princeton Universities announced that they had built a prototype firewall known as MedMon to protect wireless medical devices from outside interference."

Submission + - Researchers turn to vibrating steering wheel to shake bad driving habits (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: AT&T Labs and Carnegie Mellon University researchers have developed a vibrating steering wheel that they say can help drivers keep their eyes on the road and off of distracting GPS screens. The steering wheel can actually complement audio and visual feedback, though more so for younger than older drivers. (Perhaps the younger drivers like that Wii remote-like vibrating feedback?) Younger drivers were found to take their eyes off the road 9% less of the time and older drivers took theirs off the road 4% less.
Privacy

Submission + - FBI compromises another remailer (google.com)

Submitted by
betterunixthanunix
betterunixthanunix writes: "Another remailer has been compromised by the FBI, who made a forensic image of the hard disc of a remailer located in Austria. The remailer operator has reissued the remailer keys, but warns that messages previously sent through the remailer could be decrypted. The operator also warns that law enforcement agents had an opportunity to install a back door, and that a complete rebuild of the system will take some time."

Submission + - 'Gaia' scientist backpeddles on climate change (msn.com)

Submitted by
DesScorp
DesScorp writes: "James Lovelock, the scientist that came up with the "Gaia Theory" and a prominent herald of climate change, once predicted utter disaster for the planet from climate change, writing "“before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.” Now Lovelock is walking back his rhetoric, admitting that he and other prominent global warming advocates were being alarmists. In a new interview with MSNBC he says:

"“The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened,” Lovelock said.
“The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now,” he said.
“The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising – carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that,” he added."

Lovelock still belives the climate is changing, but at a much, much slower pace."
Privacy

Submission + - House will approve CISPA, real fight is in the Senate (cio.com) 1

Submitted by
Curseyoukhan
Curseyoukhan writes: "CISPA sure is creating some interesting political bedfellows. President Obama and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) both oppose it. The only other thing they agree on may be that Mr. Obama is not a Socialist. (Congrats to Mr. Paul on getting his own video game, by the way. Too bad the title Fallout is already taken.)"

Submission + - Hacking The Law (shareable.net) 1

Submitted by
sethopia
sethopia writes: "Brooklyn Law School's Incubator and Policy Clinic (BLIP) hosted its first "Legal Hackathon." Instead of hacking computer code, attendees — mostly lawyers, law students, coders, and entrepreneurs — used the hacking ethos to devise technologically sophisticated solutions to legal problems, These included attempts to crowdsource mayoral candidacies in New York City and hacking model privacy policies for ISPs."
Firefox

Submission + - Firefox 12 released, introduces silent, Chrome-like updater (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Firefox 12 has been officially released, with only one major new feature: A silent, background updater. Now you will have to approve the Firefox Software Updater when you first install Firefox, but after that the browser will update silently — just like Chrome. In other news, the Find feature now reliably centers the page on any matches — hooray!"

Submission + - A stellar revision of the story of life (wordpress.com)

Submitted by sycodon
sycodon writes: Today the Royal Astronomical Society in London publishes (online) Henrik Svensmark’s latest paper entitled “Evidence of nearby supernovae affecting life on Earth”. After years of effort Svensmark shows how the variable frequency of stellar explosions not far from our planet has ruled over the changing fortunes of living things throughout the past half billion years.

It has profound implications on all manner of flagship theories, including AGW.

The paper is available here.

Submission + - Harvard Encourages Faculty To Use Open Access Publishing (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by DangerFace
DangerFace writes: Exasperated by the rising subscription costs charged by academic publishers, Harvard University has encouraged thousands of faculty members to make their research articles freely available through open access journals and to resign from publications that keep articles behind costly paywalls. A memo from Harvard Library to the university's 2,100 teaching and research staff called for action after warning it could no longer afford the price hikes imposed by many large journal publishers, which cost the library around $3.5m a year. The extraordinary move thrusts one of the world's wealthiest and most prestigious institutions into the centre of an increasingly fraught debate over access to the results of academic research, much of which is funded by the taxpayer. The outcome of Harvard's decision to take on the publishers will be watched closely by major universities around the world and is likely to prompt others to follow suit with similar recommendations.
Google

Submission + - Google Drive has been revealed! (google.com) 2

Submitted by lemmen
lemmen writes: As widely expected, Google Drive has launched officially today. Google Drive is free for the first 5GB while you can get an upgrade to 25GB for only $2.50 a month.

Google Drive is available for:
- PC and Mac
- iPhone and iPad (coming soon)
- Android devices
Ubuntu

Submission + - Codename, Theming Update Announced for Ubuntu 12.10 (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
benfrog
benfrog writes: "In a blog post, Mark Shuttleworth announced some changes for Ubuntu 12.10 (due in October), including the code name (Quantal Quetzal--no, really) and a theme update. Some other more meaningful announcements include a focus on the cloud in the server version and the lack of a transition from Upstart to systemd."
Censorship

Submission + - Mutant-flu researcher backs down on plan to publish without permission (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: Ron Fouchier, a researcher at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, whose work on the H5N1 avian flu virus has been embroiled in controversy, has now agreed to apply for an export permit to submit his work to the journal Science. Fouchier's paper is one of two reporting the creation of forms of the H5N1 virus capable of spreading between mammals. The other, by Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the University of Tokyo, and his colleagues, has already been submitted to Nature.

Fouchier had said last week that he intended to defy the government and submit the work to Science without seeking the export permit that the Dutch government says is required.

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